Once a year I like to put half an hour aside to watch the announcment of the Turner art prize. It usually gets done live on Channel 4 news and like most modern art it leaves many people feeling genuinely confused and cheated (mostly because in theory anyone could win the cash prize of 25 grand by simply shagging their sister half to death in a tent littered with the names of past shags on a messed up bed whilst wearing pokla dot pj's and filming it all the while).

The analysts will always claim the winner was the bookies favourite despite the fact that I have never, ever, ever seen a bookie taking bets on post modern contemporary art pieces (and I've been to a bookies that had a dead-pool between Bob Hope and the Last Pope for fucks sake). Someone from the Guardian will pipe up with something that sounds "intellectual" but is mostly bollocks forced into words that have an average of 5 syllables because that must be a sign of intelligence on their part. In response the TV screen shows a news reporter slowly dying on the inside as he or she makes their way through the yearly procession of veritable fuckwits and "important" people who probably wore mittens all year round and showed the lighter side of mental illness to their class mates as children.

Previous winners will also get their chance to begrudgingly appluad this years winner with a mixture of smugness that they won it first and contempt that they hadn't knocked out the same idea themselves but with even less talent or effort. ...Actually, if anyone in "the biz" knows the name of the previous winner who turned up to a later Turner award in drag with a full beard, stained dress and communicating by mostly making high pitched noises could they pass it on? That guy was solid gold and a career of deeply traumatised children and birthday parties awaits him.

And this year? Why young Mark Wallinger, 48 and from Essex sent in his piece - a film of himself trapped in a gallery two years ago whilst sown up in a bear suit and off his tits. He's won first prize in our Blue Pe-Turner Art Prize for 2007. You can really see during his 154 minutes of pissing about and prat falling that he was a clear winner with his driving vision of fucking about with out any actual ammount of effort and having a complete disregard for talent.

Well done.

Ultimately, watching the awards is the closest I will ever come to self harm. Everyone will be disapointed that I did it and I won't have learnt anything in the process as I'll do it all over again next year in a flurry of talent based self loathing and a morbid interest to see what happens next.

See you next year,  cheers and lovely,
Aaron "Smurf" Murphy
05/12/07
Up A Talented Hill